“Extremely so.” Books closed his eyes. “Extremely so.”
• • • • •
Late morning sun pried through the clouds, illuminating the countryside as the sloping foothills gentled to flatter lands dotted with farmsteads. The stolen lorry chugged along with all the men except Sicarius crammed in the cab. Amaranthe lay in the troop bed, propped on a rucksack leaning against a bench. If she did not move anything, she did not hurt. An improvement. Despite his injuries, Books sat with the others, chatting and even laughing. She still felt bad about the bounty on his head, but it seemed he had come to peace with being a part of a band of mercenaries.
Sicarius leaned against the back wall of the cab, his arms across his chest, his gaze roving the countryside and the road behind them. The soldiers had been pulling up to the mine entrance as her team slipped away. She wondered what they would make of the mechanical carnage left inside. More, she wondered if anything else would come of her words to Yara. The soldiers might have been too late to help, but their arrival might mean Amaranthe’s trip into their camp had not been a waste of time. If the enforcer sergeant had relayed Amaranthe’s ideas, and the soldiers had been acting on them… Perhaps her team had succeeded in earning recognition or at least planting a seed in someone’s mind that they might not be villains. She eyed Sicarius. Mostly not villains anyway.
Sicarius noticed her watching him and came to sit on the bench beside her. “You are well?”
“Well enough. Thank you for asking.” Amaranthe tried to remember if he ever had. “And thank you for… everything up there.”
Sicarius grunted. It was not a particularly inviting grunt, but she decided to say more.
“I know my plans aren’t always the epitome of precaution and wisdom, but I appreciate your willingness to trust me enough to give them a try. And I appreciate you risking your life to protect mine, no matter how stupid I might be to put mine-and yours-in danger to start with. I would have died in that tower, if not for you.” Amaranthe pictured him taking her hands and saying it would devastate him if he lost her.
Instead he said, “Likely,” and returned to surveying the farms drifting past.
She sighed. Of course, she had not told him how much it would mean to her to lose him after she had nearly gotten him blown up above the canyon. Sicarius had been trained to be hard to read, to keep his thoughts to himself. What was her excuse? She might have died in these mountains, and she would have left the world without letting him know what he meant to her. Though it might hurt to love him and not be loved in return, wouldn’t it be worse to never find the courage to let him know how she felt? Until it was too late?
“Sicarius,” Amaranthe said quietly.
He bent low, eyes toward her face.
With the men laughing and talking up front, and the lorry clacking and chugging as the stack billowed black smoke into the air, this was scarcely a romantic spot. But maybe it did not matter. His response would not likely be to wrap her in his arms and kiss her. Whatever response he gave-if he gave one at all-she anticipated it would sting.
“I…uhm…” Amaranthe forced herself to meet his gaze. “I love you.”
A long moment passed. She did not remember breathing.
Sicarius nodded infinitesimally. “I know.”
Amaranthe looked away and cleared her throat. “Of course. I figured you did. I just wanted to make sure. That’s all.”
As the lorry rumbled on, she tried to tell herself she had not been an idiot for saying something. He knew. Of course he knew. Nobody had ever claimed she was hard to read.
Sicarius dropped from the bench to sit shoulder-to-shoulder, though not touching. “You are my employer.”
Emperor’s eyeteeth, he was going to explain to her why her feelings were foolish. She groaned inwardly and told herself to drop it, to say nothing else. But saying nothing was not her strongpoint. “That was your choice. I wanted to work with you, not order you around.”
“Teams need leaders. Given the goals of this team, you’re the appropriate leader. We’ve discussed this.”
“Yes.”
Sicarius spread a hand toward the others. “That this works, a woman leading five men, is a marvel. I suspect it would work less if you were sleeping with one of us.”
Amaranthe stared at goats grazing beside the road and regretted sharing her feelings. That he was probably right made it worse. There would be resentment if someone, or two someones, got to have relations out in the woods while the rest had to pretend not to notice, but it was not what she wanted to hear.
“And there’s Sespian,” Sicarius said so softly she almost thought she imagined it.
She found his eyes again, sure her own were incredulously wide. “He barely knows me. Whatever he felt-he was drugged at the time. I’m sure he’s over that initial interest.”
“Perhaps,” Sicarius said. “But there’s already too much separating us. I would not wish to add that. Also-”
“All right.” Amaranthe threw up a hand. Now he chose to be a garrulous person? “I don’t need a list. I was just expressing a feeling. If you don’t share that feeling, that’s fine.” She sank lower against the rucksack and avoided looking at him. She sounded huffy, and she knew it. She thought of the handful of coworkers she had rebuffed during her years as an enforcer; she had wanted so much to show her supervisors that she was serious about her job, that she would never consider something as unprofessional as a patrol romance. Now, she was in the shoes of the spurned. Fitting, she supposed. “Sorry,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be a further wedge between you two either.”
Sicarius’s shoulder came to rest against hers. He laid his hand on top of hers.
Amaranthe grew still. He had never held her hand. She kept her head facing forward, half afraid eye contact would make him leave, like some timid forest creature.
“Just to be clear,” she said, “you don’t share my feelings. Right?”
He did not answer.
“Sicarius? That was a question. I made sure my tone went up at the end.”
He snorted softly. “I care, Amaranthe. More than I thought myself capable.”
“Oh,” she mouthed.
Maldynado clambered out of the cab, munching on a fistful of dried pears. Sicarius released her hand.
“You two mind if I join you? Books is talking about his plans to invest Sicarius’s gambling house earnings. Invest! What kinds of mercenaries invest? Team money should be for carousing and buying weapons.” He rapped his knuckles on the roof of the cab. “Maybe acquiring transport that doesn’t have enforcer logos on the side. Or rust.”
“I thought you were just in this for your statue,” Amaranthe said.
“I am.” Maldynado snapped his fingers. “Say, do you think that enforcer gal is going to put in a good word for us? You won her over, right?” He ambled over, rounding Sicarius’s feet with much room to spare, then plopped down on the other side of Amaranthe. “You don’t mind me joining you, do you?” His eyes widened as he seemed to consider some possibility, but then he snickered dismissively. “You two weren’t having some private rendezvous back here, were you?”
Sicarius said nothing, though there was more ice in his gaze than usual.
Amaranthe merely sighed. “No rendezvous, no.”
“Good,” Maldynado said. “Let’s talk about your birthday celebration. This whole fiasco has crimped my plans terribly. The city is going to be a mess when we get back, and I’m not sure how we’ll find a decent…”
As Maldynado burbled on, Amaranthe exchanged looks with Sicarius. Would there ever be a someday when they could have a private rendezvous?
EPILOGUE
In the boiler room of the pumping house, Amaranthe swept the last pile of dirt, hair, and walnut shells into a
